The low regard in which Hunter held his peers began to plummet with Sang's near perfect mimicry of his voice. It should have unnerved him, but outwardly the brutish male was stone-faced, his form hovering by the room's cleverly concealed exit. He didn't bother turning to look at the fiery-haired girl as she spit out a whole bunch of curse-filled nothings.
Why, oh why had she been made to accompany him?
He used to wonder that all the time about Emery. Timid and small, he hadn't - and still didn't - see any proper utilization of him aside from garnering sympathy. Besides that, what else did he offer? Wit? Charm? Intelligence? Maybe so. But Emery had yet to use any of that to their advantage, and that annoyed the hell out of Hunter. But at least the boy had something to use.
Hunter didn't see anything rattling around in Sang's head besides blind stupidity. So he answered in the simplest way he knew how.
"Tell you what. Don't like it? Then go back to the fucking forest and rot. Or I'll take your ass there myself."
He didn't stick around to hear her answer. Frankly, he didn't care. With a scoff, Hunter opened the secret door behind the desk and propelled himself up and through it.
"Those are your options. I'll know soon enough which one you chose."
And with that, he made his way through, eventually reaching the entrance hidden behind the portrait in Abernathy Hall. With a nudge of his foot, the painting creaked open, and he made his descent onto the hardwood floors.
Somebody gasped.
There were retreating footsteps, and in the dimness a girl could be discerned. Her expression was one of alarm, though it quickly turned into recognition, then confusion.
"Hunter?"
It was Feyre.
Her brows knitted together, eyes shifting between the boy and the hole he had just emerged from. But it wasn't long until Feyre's form relaxed. After all, Hunter was a good friend of hers.
"Well, I never thought I'd see you climb out of the back of a portrait," she huffed out a laugh, yet despite herself the girl shivered. "That's so strange. What's over there? Some kind of hidden room?"
There was a pregnant pause. Hunter was frozen in place, and his stare was as hollow as it was fixed. His mouth opened to say something...then closed.
No. No. No.
This wasn't how he had wanted to start things. Even if she was a target, holy shit. He'd thought there'd be more time to gather information. To plant seeds, so to speak, and watch them grow. But now Feyre stood where she wasn't supposed to be, seeing things she wasn't supposed to see, and he found himself unprepared for the coldness that washed over him. Because he knew what had to be done.
But he had no choice, right? She had seen the room. She had seen him come out of the orphans' inner sanctum. The girl would talk; they always talked.
"It's a secret room. Got a party going in there."
Every word was stilted, forced from his tongue by an engineered mission. His face twisted as he thumbed behind him towards the ajar portrait.
"Wanna take a look?"
But it was too quiet for a party. Feyre shook her head and stepped away, sensing an incongruence in Hunter's words. Gone was the warmth in her expression. Now it held fear. Uncertainty. Suspicion.
Her eyes didn't leave him as she continued to back away, one hand fisted against her chest as she slowly reached for her necklace.
"No, it's alright." Feyre faltered. Her voice sounded like a child's compared to his. "I think I'll go. I have somewhere else I need to be."
Clever girl.
Hunter would have done the same in her shoes. He could see himself reflected in her doe-like eyes: a hulking figure draped in shadows. Was there evil lurking in those blackened pits, a deep malice that struck one to the bone like an ice pick? His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. Hesitation ate away at his insides. It was deja vú; the situation mirrored another, and his insides twisted as he remembered the screams, the fear marring one's face.
He had no choice.
The divide between them was crossed in two long strides. Without a word, Hunter grabbed hold of her right arm and wrenched her back, pinning her to him with one massive arm. His free hand clamped over her mouth.
"Quiet."
She really should have run.
Feyre struggled against his tight grasp, but it was useless. Hunter was stronger than her, bigger than her. Any tighter and he might just crush her lungs. Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes, but her other hand still rested firmly against her chest, the tip of her thumb and forefinger just brushing against the pendant hanging from her necklace.
Suddenly, a sharp, high-pitched sound pierced the silence.
"What the hell?"
The quarterback's head swiveled sharply, his eyes growing bright and the alert in the gloom. The noise was akin to a piercing, shrieking whistle, and Hunter winced as it scraped at his ears. Roughly, he shook his head.
"What is that? What did you do?" Hunter barked at Feyre - to what end, he did not know. The poor girl was still silenced by his hand, and he made a frustrated noise, his eyes scanning her person quickly. The alarm was coming from her...but from where?
And then he found it. Clutched in her hand against her chest like a talisman.
The goddamn pendant.
He ripped it from her fingers with ease. The metal dug into his skin as he closed his hand around it and squeezed as hard as he could. Cracking noises petered through the spaces between his fingers, and then after a pronounced pomp! his fingers slowly uncurled, revealing a crushed and broken necklace. As quickly as the siren had sounded, it was gone.
And so, too, were they. Hunter and his bound quarry disappeared within the portrait's contents, back to the meeting room. When he re-entered, he released Feyre unceremoniously onto the floor, and his voice cut through the tense silence he had left like a knife.
"You wanted to know who Feyre was? Well here she is."
The vitriol in his voice towards Sang was uncalled for, and he knew it. The self-hatred he felt in that moment was beginning to leak into every aspect of his being, and it spilled into his words, his stance, his look.
"Change of plans. It's time you got your hands dirty, new blood. Fucking you too, Emery," Hunter hissed, turning his lead-filled gaze towards his brother. "Forget waiting around for information. We'll start with some decisive action now."
He smiled coldly.
"Take her where it all began. To the forest."
